


A Wild Call and a Clear Call

by inexplicifics



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Magic, Music, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:14:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27788065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inexplicifics/pseuds/inexplicifics
Summary: Every child in Kerack feels the pull towards the waterfall, far offshore. Most of them outgrow it. But some few, the sea-called, never lose that urge follow the pull out to the open sea, to distant falls and whatever lies beyond them.Jaskier has always felt the call of the waterfall beneath his sternum.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 66
Kudos: 792
Collections: The Witcher Flash Fic Challenge #011





	A Wild Call and a Clear Call

Jaskier leans on the fence around the schoolyard, listening to the little girls clap and chant. He knows the rhyme, of course; every child in Kerack learns it. _The waterfall, fall, fall / That eats the sea, sea, sea / It has a call, call, call / For you and me, me, me / You mustn’t heed, heed, heed / You mustn’t go, go, go / Or else the sea, sea, sea / Will eat you whole, whole, whole_. The little girls’ hands fly faster than Jaskier’s eyes can follow, and he mouths the rest of the rhyme along with them.

_Beyond the falls, falls, falls / We do not know, know, know / Refuse its call, call, call / And do not go, go, go._

One little girl slaps her hands down, and her partner squeaks in dismay as she fails to pull her own hands back in time. “Ah, phoo, you always win, Mili,” she grumbles. The victor giggles triumphantly.

“We can play knights and princesses,” she suggests, magnanimous in victory, and her partner perks up and goes scrambling for a stick, crying, “I get to be the knight, and there’s a horrible dragon in that tree!”

Mili obligingly screams and swoons - quite a good swoon, for a child that small - and the little knight takes her place before Mili, challenging the tree with stick held high.

Jaskier grins and leaves them to it. It’s been a long time since he got to play at knights and dragons, and he’s glad to know the grand tradition carries on.

The rhyme thrums in his blood as he heads for the seawall. _You mustn’t heed, heed, heed / You mustn’t go, go, go_.

But there are always those in Kerack who are sea-called. Everyone knows the rhyme, everyone is wary of the great waterfall far off shore, close enough to see on a clear day from the top of the towers, close enough that its endless roaring is a faint but ever-present backdrop to the city’s noise.

When Jaskier was a child, he learned to ignore the call, the insubstantial _pull_ that every citizen of Kerack feels from birth. For most people, it grows weaker with age, until at some point in their late teens or early twenties it ebbs entirely, subsumed in the bustle of marriage and children, daily labor and regular holidays.

But for the sea-called, it never fades, but grows stronger.

He leans on the seawall and stares out over the vast silvered blue-grey expanse, towards the rising mist of the distant waterfall. He always knows where the waterfall is, no matter how far he goes from the sea, or how turned around he might get in the narrow alleys of the city or the forests of his father’s lands. It is his true north, and has been since his birth, the call, the pull, the endless patient desire.

Jaskier can feel it like a hook behind his breastbone, pulling him inexorably towards the sea. It wakes him in the night, draws him out of his bed to lean out the window and breathe in the salty ocean breeze; it distracts him from his duties, leaving him staring off towards the docks when he ought to be going over the county’s books or listening to his father pass judgements in the great hall. He’s never been able to keep a lover, for even the flush of new love cannot compare to the endless, patient, ever-present pull of the waterfall. He tried to go away to school, far inland to Oxenfurt, and stayed for four dreadful years, every night’s dreams consumed with the sound of the waterfall, every waking moment aching with the pull to return to the sea. They offered him a lecturer’s position, but Jaskier fled as soon as he had his degree, fled back to Kerack and spent three days standing knee-deep in cold saltwater, staring out towards the distant falls.

Everyone around him knows, of course. The sea-called are easy to spot: daydreamers, poets, always yearning. Jaskier’s younger brother will be named heir to the county as soon as he turns eighteen, and Jaskier wishes him well, has no resentment that his brother will be given the position which ought to be his by birthright - he doesn’t want it, and would honestly be quite bad at it. Jakub will make a much better count than Jaskier ever would.

Jakub’s birthday is tomorrow. Jaskier has gotten him a fine metal pen inlaid with rubies, and a beautiful leather saddle tooled with elegant designs, and a ridiculous jaunty hat in Jakub’s favorite shade of red. He’s promised Mother he’ll play for the dancing, and Father that he’ll make a speech at the feast, and Jakub that he won’t tell any of the really amusing embarrassing stories about what Jakub was like as a toddler.

They all know, though, that once the feast is over - once Jakub is named Viscount in Jaskier’s place, heir to their father’s title and lands and honors - once the last duty tying Jaskier to Kerack has been severed -

He’s going to take a little boat, one of the ones that no one ever uses save the sea-called, and go out following that pull beneath his breastbone until he reaches the waterfall.

Maybe he’ll die. Probably he’ll die.

But he can’t help wondering if maybe there’s a reason for the call - maybe, just maybe, there’s something waiting out beyond the waterfall.

*

It’s so _loud_.

Jaskier doesn’t know why he expected anything else, actually. The waterfall roars loudly enough that they can hear it in Kerack, miles away; why wouldn’t it be louder as he gets closer?

He tears his handkerchief in half and wads it into his ears, and watches the edge of the world approach. He stopped having to row about a mile back; the current snatched his little boat up, easy as a leaf in a flooded river. He’s fairly sure he couldn’t escape it if he wanted to at this point, but he doesn’t want to. He’s sitting at the front of the boat, now, eyeing the mist as it rises from the waterfall to form a great hazy cloudbank shot through with faint rainbows. It’s truly a beautiful sight.

The pull under his breastbone is stronger than it's ever been, but somehow softer, too - gentler, perhaps. Like it knows he’s coming, and is content.

He’s wanted to hate it, now and again, the constant pull towards doom. But it’s sort of pointless - it would be like hating the wind because it’s cold, or the sunlight because it can burn. The waterfall calls people, and sometimes it calls them too loudly to refuse, that’s all. Why rail against destiny? It’s made him a very good poet, that constant yearning - his professors at Oxenfurt didn’t know the distant, unreachable beloved in his poems was a _waterfall_ , but they commended his passion and the depth of emotion in his words all the same. And he suspects that even without being sea-called, he would have been very bad at ruling a county, but if he weren’t sea-called, his parents would never have agreed to let his younger brother take his place, and both Jaskier and Lettenhove’s people would have suffered for it.

He doesn’t particularly want to die, but maybe he won’t. Just because none of the sea-called have ever come back doesn’t mean they’re _dead_ , after all. Maybe there’s something waiting for him, beyond the waterfall. There’s got to be a reason for the sea-call, after all; why else would otherwise perfectly rational people want so _desperately_ to go into what is, Jaskier must acknowledge, almost certain death?

It’s not a curse - any number of mages have come to study it, and gone away baffled. It’s not a god’s work, as far as any of the various temples can tell. Nowhere else has such a waterfall, nowhere else has the sea-call and the edge of the world.

Jaskier clenches his hands on the sides of the boat so hard his knuckles go white as the current begins to move faster, sweeping him along so swiftly it almost feels like he is flying. Whatever the secret of the waterfall is, he’s about to learn it. The roaring of the water is so loud he cannot think; the pull beneath his breastbone throbs in slow counterpoint to his own throbbing heartbeat.

The boat tips forward over the edge of the world, and Jaskier lets go of the sides and pushes away from it, spreading his arms wide as the mist engulfs him, and he falls.

*

Jaskier wakes up, which is something of a surprise.

He’s lying on something warm and soft, and someone is humming a song he recognizes - a song he _wrote_. He doesn’t hurt _nearly_ as much as he would have expected, given the whole falling-over-a-waterfall thing; the worst pain is a faint ache in his shoulders, doubtless the legacy of the unaccustomed labor of rowing for hours. Warily, he opens his eyes, to discover that he’s in a stone-walled room, lying on a very large bed heaped with furs and blankets, and the source of the humming is a truly _astonishingly_ handsome man sitting beside the fireplace. The man has white hair, though he does not otherwise look old, and he is sewing while he hums. He looks very contented.

The pull behind Jaskier’s breastbone has not exactly _vanished_ , but it isn’t a pull anymore. Instead, it’s a slow, steady throb, somehow comforting in its endless rhythm.

“Hullo,” he says, and the white-haired man looks up from his sewing and smiles. It’s not a very large smile, but it’s so sweet and purely joyful that Jaskier’s breath catches - at that, and at the fact that his companion’s eyes are _gold_ , and slitted like a cat’s.

“You’re awake,” the golden-eyed man says, and rises, setting his sewing aside, to come to the side of the bed. He looks rather as though he wants to reach out and touch Jaskier, and doesn’t dare, so his hands sort of flutter a bit before he brings them to his sides. His voice is low and a little gravelly, and Jaskier likes it immediately. “How do you feel?”

“Confused,” Jaskier decides, sitting up slowly. No new aches make themselves known. “Where am I?”

“Past the waterfall. Safe.”

“Safe is nice,” Jaskier says. “How am I _alive_?”

The man smiles. “You were called. The waterfall let you pass.”

Jaskier rubs his chest, realizing as he does so that he’s wearing a loose linen shirt and a pair of braies that do not belong to him. “It’s different now, the sea-call.”

“Yes,” the man says. “You’re here.”

“And even more confused,” Jaskier says.

The man chuckles and offers his hand, and Jaskier takes it and lets the man pull him to his feet. His hand is broad and scarred and warm and gentle, and Jaskier thinks he’d trust himself to the steady strength of it without any hesitation. There are warm slippers waiting beside the bed, and a heavy dressing-gown, and a seat beside the fire with a covered bowl and a mug of mulled wine on a little table beside it. The man settles across from him, taking his sewing up again. It’s a shirt, Jaskier decides, or will be when it’s done.

The covered bowl turns out to hold a thick, savory stew - Jaskier can’t identify the meat, but it’s very good all the same - and a slice of hearty brown bread; the mulled wine is sweet and warms him all the way down to his toes. The golden-eyed man waits until he has finished eating and settled back with the mug of wine cupped in his hands before he speaks again.

“Have you ever heard of witchers?”

Jaskier blinks and wracks his brain. “Once?” he says after a minute. “I think they were mentioned in a history course. Some sort of specialized hunter?”

The man nods. “We hunt monsters.”

“There aren’t any monsters on the continent,” Jaskier points out.

Another nod. “About...three centuries ago, the mages of Aretuza created...another place, another world. They sent all the monsters there. But there’s still a door.”

“The waterfall?” Jaskier guesses.

“Hm. Beneath the falls. There’s a gate. It’s barred.” The golden-eyed man shrugs. “We - the witchers - they made us a place between the gate and the world. To guard against the monsters ever getting out.”

“Alright,” Jaskier says slowly. “That makes sense, albeit terrifying sense. But why am _I_ here? Am I to be - to be a witcher?”

The golden-eyed man shakes his head hastily. “No, no, never that.” He hums and frowns down at the fabric in his hands. “We discovered, a few years after we came here, that the gate needs...maintenance. So the waterfall calls people who can sustain it.”

“I know nothing of gate repair,” Jaskier says.

“As best we can tell - we are not mages - it is kept strong by music.”

“Oh,” Jaskier says. “Huh. That...makes sense, in a bizarre magical sort of way. So it’s not that the sea-calling makes you poetic, it’s that poets are called?”

The man nods.

“And children are _always_ singing,” Jaskier says, starting to grin. “So the sea-call is stronger when we’re young. Oh, that’s fascinating! Alright, so the waterfall called me to help sustain the gate. That’s...quite a destiny. I have so many questions!” He wiggles happily, and the man’s eyes crinkle at the corners in quiet amusement. “But the one I’m _most_ interested in right now is - how did you know my song? Because that _was_ one of mine you were humming when I woke up.”

The man’s ears turn pink at the tips, and he stares quite fixedly at his sewing. “Um. Hm. It’s...when the sea-call chooses someone on land, it…” he trails off, ears going even pinker. “It chooses a witcher, too.”

“Chooses a witcher?” Jaskier asks. The man nods.

“You feel a pull,” he says slowly. “We...hear singing.”

“You hear us singing,” Jaskier marvels, and then blushes. “Oh, gods, you must have gotten _so_ tired of my practicing while I was at Oxenfurt.” He can remember singing the same tune eight or ten times in a row, making tiny changes each time until it sounded _right_.

“I didn’t mind. I like your voice,” the man says, very quietly.

“Oh,” Jaskier says, blushing harder. “Well then. Ah. I quite like yours, as well.”

The man’s ears are bright red by now, but there’s a shy smile lurking around the corners of his mouth when he looks up. “You do?”

“I do.” Jaskier grins. “And may I know the name of the man with such a lovely voice and such impeccable taste as to like my singing?”

The golden-eyed man chuckles. “Geralt,” he says. “Geralt of the Wolf School.”

“Geralt,” Jaskier says, savoring the word on his tongue. “It’s good to meet you. I’m Jaskier.”

“Jaskier,” Geralt says, and Jaskier thinks his name sounds better in Geralt’s mouth than it ever has before. “It’s good to meet you at last.”

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Witcher Flash Fic challenge.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] A Wild Call and a Clear Call](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28448952) by [Chantress](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chantress/pseuds/Chantress)




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